While most recipes for fire cider use a heavy hand with the garlic because of its potent medicinal properties, we recommend going easy unless you want neighbors knocking on the door every time you crack open a bottle. Otherwise, you should feel free to tweak and embrace the flexible nature of this recipe. Fresh turmeric is a lovely substitute for dried—use about 3 tablespoons coarsely chopped or grated. And instead of dried hot chiles, use sliced fresh jalapeño or habanero, or even smoke-dried ones. Consider adding other citrus, such as grapefruit or blood oranges, in place of or in addition to the lemon. Note: this recipe needs to sit for 1 month before enjoying.

Any kind of medium or large dried bean works great here. Starchier varieties—like Italian gigante beans or cannellinis—will produce a creamier broth, and more vegetal ones—anything lima-like—will produce a thinner, slightly stew-ier broth. Black beans, kidneys, and pintos are all good. The onions and cabbage melt into the dish, providing a blanket of sweet richness. Embrace the versatility of this dish by playing around with the vegetable make-up by adding cubed winter squash, swapping chicories for the cabbage, using stock in place of the water, or stirring in blanched hearty greens or spinach at the end, for example. And serving options are similarly open-ended; see below for a few favorites.

Kimchi can be made and eaten any time of the year, but I really crave it in the spring. In this recipe, the kimchi and assorted quick-pickled vegetables are the dominant flavors, making a bright-tasting, tangy bowl. Pickling chard stems is a great way to use them up—they’ll add bits of celery-like crunch, and using rainbow chard means lots of extra color, too. Furthermore, the pickled components and the sautéed chard both keep well, meaning that they can be made in advance or packed up as good leftovers. Let the toppings come to room temperature before serving, so that they don’t cool down the bowl drastically when you stir all the ingredients together.

For this noodle bowl, I took inspiration from Heidi Swanson’s Black Sesame Otsu in Super Natural Every Day, in which a blanket of black sesame seeds is toasted until it smells heady, then pounded with a mortar and pestle and combined with some Asian pantry staples to make a thick, savory, and tangy dressing, here given a bit more punch with wasabi. Like other cold noodle dishes, this is a good dish for packing up, and in my experience has been wonderful on the beach. The shredded egg and wisps of radish incorporate into the noodles, the shallot brings crunch and zing, and the final drizzle of kecap manis—the Indonesian soy sauce— brings the whole bowl together in the most satisfying way.